Gah, English

So I'm currently taking summer classes at a college I don't go to during the rest of the school year (and is on the opposite side of the country as where I normally live), and we're not supposed to speak English...

And even though it's only been a week and a half, I am going crazy from the lack of communication. Maybe doing an immersion-course like this for LEVEL 1 FREAKING MANDARIN was a bad idea. Hehe. Whoops. (Sometimes I think my life is just one bad idea after another.)

Although, I HAVE wanted to take Mandarin, since, like, forever.

Actually - wait. Scratch that. I rarely ever want to take a language class. I want to speak languages. The taking the classes is just the unfortunate method in which one learns secondary language. I actually really don't like class...homework...ugh and the early start times. I honestly thought I'd never have to go back to 7:50 am class once I graduated from high school, since most colleges don't have classes before 9 - 8, if they really must.

But 7:50? Really? Why do they even care about the extra ten minutes - from my own personal psychological point of view, having a time that begins with an "8" feels way, way, way later (and more humane) than one that begins with a "7"...even if the difference is only 10 minutes.

Sigh. I wish I could have a summer vacation like everyone else! But like I said before, my life = a string of bad decisions. Though I suppose if I can speak Mandarin at some level at the end of this, it'll seem a lot better in hindsight. I just have, like, 7 1/2 more weeks to go.

I should really be studying - I still have to memorize two dialogues and a shit ton of vocab words for tomorrow, and since I bombed today's vocab test, I should probably get on that. Ugh, I can't wait until we can stop writing stupid pinyin on the quizzes - like, I know that you should know both the pinyin and the characters, but it's so much easier for me to remember how to write characters than pinyin, thanks to the dumb tones.

I miss Japanese and its monotone phonetic system :( Hell, I miss ITALIAN and its monotone phonetic system. Mi piace italiano perchè italiano ha un sistema fonetico senza toni. Adesso voglio studiare italiano! (Though I would prefer Japanese, I think. So far, Japanese has been the easiest language for me to study, though that might have just been because of the other people in my Japanese and Italian classes skewing my perception of how well/badly I actually was doing. I think I actually learned more Italian in one academic year than I learned of Japanese in twice or three times that amount of time.)

I really want to write, but this is SUCH a bad place to do something like that - even this (pointless?) blog post is kind of "against the rules". Especially since even when I don't write, I still space out all the time and think up characters and situations and epic battles and what not.

Anyway, I should go shower and study and SLEEP, since I have to get up at 6:45, eat breakfast, and sit through 4 hours of class before lunch. (FMySummer.)